"Beau is Afraid" marks another bold, brilliant masterwork from Ari Aster

Beau is Afraid (2023)

Coming off two staggering feature films, like “Hereditary” and “Midsummer,” writer-director Ari Aster seemingly took a blank check from A24 and made the deliriously surreal, absurdly funny “Beau is Afraid.” It’s a bold, distended swing, but the longer one allows the film to marinate, the more certain one will be that this is a brilliant motion picture. Enthralling for all 179 minutes, it’s quite an adventure—and kind of a miracle—seeing Aster’s wildly singular imagination, brazen vision, and chutzpah be brought to fruition. 

From the birth canal, Beau Wassermann (Joaquin Phoenix) has always had a lot to be afraid of in his life. He’s mild-mannered but riddled with anxiety and sees a therapist (Stephen McKinley Henderson). His rundown apartment is located right in a city that has gone mad. On the anniversary of his father’s death whom he never met, Beau is already running late to the airport to visit his overbearing mother Mona (Patti LuPone), a wealthy businesswoman. Before he can even leave this urban hell, his bag and apartment key are both stolen. What to do, Beau calls his mother, who expresses her disappointment. Then another calamity compounds with another, sending Beau to the suburbs, a traveling heater commune in the woods, and finally home.

Taking pills without water and dying. Getting noise complaints when you’re not even making noise. Leaving your apartment door unlocked and having it invaded. Ejaculating and dying. These all sound like irrational fears, but for Beau, these are everyday obstacles. Anything is possible when this version of the real world is so intentionally jarring. The film plays like a hall-of-mirrors subversion of a picaresque hero’s journey, and there’s an exciting sense of discovery in each section as we follow Beau. Aster fills nearly every frame with an off-kilter, darkly amusing detail, whether it’s a newscast warning about the “Birthday Boy Stab Man,” profane graffiti in Beau’s apartment building, or the K-pop boy band posters in a teenage girl’s bedroom Beau takes over. By the time we’ve been through it all with Beau, one particular image in an attic cannot be unseen or forgotten. And one hilariously inspired use of music during an ultimately shocking moment promises the viewer that he or she will never hear a particular Mariah Carey love song the same again.

A bracing, challenging masterwork, “Beau is Afraid” keeps reinventing itself. At once, it’s an absurdist dark comedy, a Kafkaesque nightmare, and a self-reflexive memory piece with animated flourishes, all rolled into a sprawling Freudian odyssey with the genetics of Homer and Charlie Kaufman. While this could all come off unwieldy and more than a little indulgent, Ari Aster keeps one guessing how every strange piece will connect into a meaningful whole with masterful technical craftsmanship every step of the way. Joaquin Phoenix is superb as the fearful Beau, navigating a tricky line between cowardly, painfully passive sadsack and sad soul. Patti LuPone, going full diva as Beau’s mother Mona, is a powerhouse of palpable rage and resentment, and Zoe Lister-Jones flawlessly lays the groundwork in flashbacks as the younger incarnation of Mona. Without revealing their specific parts in the story, Amy Ryan, Nathan Lane, Kylie Rogers, and Parker Posey are all unforgettable.

Not every film needs to be a puzzle asking to be solved, but films like “Beau is Afraid” deserve time to be processed and are worthy of dissection. Ari Aster’s latest is destined to be divisive and earn an F Cinemascore as a badge of honor by the mainstream hoi polloi. With only three feature films under his belt, Aster needs to foot the therapy bill for all audience members, and that’s meant in the best possible way. Without sounding hyperbolic, “Beau Is Afraid” is the kind of monumental epic that has the power to change one’s mood in three hours. It’s pretty unlikely any audience member will come away feeling indifferent with nothing to chew on.

Grade: A

A24 is releasing “Beau Is Afraid” (179 min.) in theaters on April 21, 2023.